STEERLife to revolutionise pharma manufacturing

STEERLife, a Bengaluru based startup today announced its technology solution that can help pharmaceutical industry move manufacturing practices from the conventional batch to continuous processing.

STEERLife, a Bengaluru based startup today announced its technology solution that can help pharmaceutical industry move manufacturing practices from the conventional batch to continuous processing.

Calling it the future of pharmaceutical industry, moving to continuous processing can reduce medicinal manufacturing cost by 25 to 30 percent, the company claimed.

A synergy between engineering and pharmaceutical sciences, STEERLife’s new technology solution aims to “change the way we make and take our medicine,” said Dr. Himadri Sen, chairman, STEERLife.

The number of drug recalls due to contamination, defects, improper testing or inherent safety problems surged at Food and Drug Administration testing in 2014, demanding a solution that safeguards against regulatory stricture while addressing the need for long-term sustainability and efficiency. Sen said that STEERLife’s team of 14 scientists and engineers developed a technology for “activated granulation,” which reduces the granulation time, thus reducing the overall process time from “days to seconds.”

STEERLife also announced a new technological solution in developing effervescent tablets that mixed with water in less than 30 seconds. Considering that 33 percent consumers gag, vomit or choke on tablets and 40 percent people have difficulty swallowing them, effervescent tablets could be a solution, said Dr. Sen.While some companies already produced effervescent tablets, manufacturing them is a highly cumbersome, rigorous, costly and polluting task. This is why, Pharmaceutical giant, Ranbaxy recently stopped producing them, Dr. Sen said. “But using continuous processing technology, the cost and effort for producing effervescent medicines can be highly minimized,” said Indu Bhushan, chief technology officer at STEERLife. The company said major Indian pharmaceutical producers have shown interest in their technology and they would be announcing it once their deal has been finalized.